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Down by the Eno, Down by the Haw: A Wonder Almanac by Thorpe Moeckel

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The Eno River, named for the Eno Indians, runs through two North Carolina counties just north of Durham and flows into the Neuse River The Haw River is about a hundred miles long and flows south of Durham into the Cape Fear River. Thorpe Moeckel spent a year exploring these two watersheds navigating the rivers in his canoe, and the earthen surroundings via trail. This book contain his musings as he explores, organized month by month. "His humility is earnest as his lyricism is grand, and Moeckel does intimately know the inhabitants of Piedmont environment to which he has committed himself, observing the compromised landscape with an awareness so enamored of every detail it is also "promiscuous." In the moments you are able to spend with these pages, you too will be let in, on the beauties tucked into the woods behind shopping plazas, and to a way of thinking and seeing that can, with what is gathered in some short lunch break walking, make the troubled-of-heart believe again that this world's tangles are where we are blessed to be ensnared." - Rose McLarney. "The word I think of with this stunning almanac is range. Moeckel ranges far and deep, farther and deeper than he has ever gone, while mostly 'sitting and looking around' the Piedmont of North Carolina. And this wondrous epic expands his range as a poet, the language in these prose poems facile, playful, breathtaking." - Janisse Ray. "That he finds the words to bring these woods to such wondrous, vibrant life is what makes this book so necessary. I've not read a book in years that bears witness to beauty with such selfless and artful gratitude." - Michael Parker.  This is Thorpe Moeckel's second non-fiction book to go with four poetry books and a middle-grade novel. He teaches at Hollins University near Roanoke and lives in Snail Hollow.

Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2019. 127 pages. Trade paperback, $16.00.